New gloves, part one

After David and Julia divorced, and David left to seek his fortune in the West, Julia and their three daughters were forced to fend for themselves financially. This meant that each of the women would have to contribute any earnings to pay for their household expenses. When they were young, they mostly helped their mother with the various jobs she took—laundry, sewing, helping the other farm women with their canning and gardening—but as they grew older, they were able to secure their own employment and income. Even Leta who was only five when her father left was trained to sew and developed a delicate stitch perfect for certain needs.

While Julia utilized most of her daughters’ income to support the household, she did permit each of them to keep a portion for her own personal needs and interests. They had designed a family budget and each person’s responsibility for meeting it. Leta’s was a fixed amount. After she contributed to the household fund, the remaining income was hers. Like her mother, she was cautious and somewhat frugal with her finances. She dedicated a portion to her savings, which she kept in a little box under her bed.

“A woman should always have her own money,” Julia told all three of her daughters shortly after their father abandoned them. As he was the principal income-earner, his abrupt departure left the mother and three young girls with no specific income and several bills, including two accounts he had opened without his wife’s knowledge. The mother and her girls were sitting at the breakfast table with the stack of papers in front of them. Julia had just totaled the debt and monthly payment requirement. With a grim face, she went into a cupboard and removed a small tin. She put the tin on the table and took off the lid to reveal a stash of bills and coins.

“Always,” Julia repeated for emphasis and set about fulfilling her immediate financial obligations.

Although very young at the time, Leta took her mother’s words to heart, as did her sisters, and all three immediately selected small tins or boxes as containers for their own savings.

Sometimes maintaining this reserve was challenging for Leta. She liked pretty things—hats, dresses, jewelry, scarves, shoes, underclothes—and had a rather impulsive nature. So she developed an alternative savings, a pool of money for more immediate purchases. Having this in addition to her tin of emergency money was quite challenging, but she was determined to make it work. When the desire to purchase a particular item came upon her, she would learn the cost and go to this fund. As she regularly contributed to it, sometimes she could purchase the item right away; other times, she would have to wait until she had amassed the needed amount.

Just before her fourteenth birthday, Julia asked Leta what gift would she like to celebrate the day. Initially, the question surprised the girl. Birthday celebrations were rare in the Scott household. Julia had always called them an extravagance that they could not afford. However, she would prepare the celebrant’s favorite meal and leave a few pieces of candy at the birthday child’s place setting, enough candy for the child to have two for herself and one for everyone else in the household. The siblings never considered giving each other gifts. That luxury was reserved for Christmas when they would exchange home-made presents—stockings, handkerchiefs, scarves. Before he left them, their brother Fred would carve wooden animals that they would add to their Noah’s Ark collection. Only Aaron would purchase items, but still these were always practical or needed.

Julia’s seeming to break the family birthday tradition by asking Leta if she wanted something special was startling, and at first Leta did not know how to respond.

“Are you thinking?” Julia asked after a few moments of silence. The mother always asked this question to apply pressure for an answer, and Leta knew she had to respond immediately.

“Gloves,” Leta blurted.

“Gloves?” her mother repeated in surprise. “But it’s going on spring, and you got new gloves at Christmas. What on earth will you do with a new pair of gloves?”

“No, Mother,” Leta clarified, “I mean, a pair of white dress gloves, like the ladies wear, like you wear for church, only white.”

Julia stopped everything and devoted her entire attention to her daughter.

“You’re not old enough.”

To be continued.